


Don't You Cry No More

by TheBitterSweetBish



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dabb screwed up, Dean is not dead, Domestic, Fix-It, again!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-23
Updated: 2020-11-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27676745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBitterSweetBish/pseuds/TheBitterSweetBish
Summary: Carry on, s15 e20, only works if you ignore canon lore, and IRL medical science.  Apply some common sense to Dabbs mistakes, and here's what you get.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17





	Don't You Cry No More

**Author's Note**

(which my regular readers will know I **never** do, so that lets you know how serious this is)

First, let me apologize. This rushed job is nowhere near the usual level of quality to which I try to hold myself. It leaves questions. A lot is glossed over. Considering the current unpleasant circumstances, I felt that speed was more important than quality. One day, when I am feeling up to it, I hope to do a proper writing of this fic with the attention it deserves, but for now, there are a few things I had to make people aware of, and the sooner the better.

1.

Dean didn't die. He passed out from blood loss. You don't close your eyes when you die. You don't bleed out that fast from a wound that wasn't bleeding all that badly. (for a hunter, totally bad for a regular person, but Dean has walked off worse than that) Internal injuries might have killed him that quickly, but there couldn't have been any because Dean wasn't struggling to breathe or coughing up blood.

2.

That couldn't have been Heaven. The only way into Heaven since season 8 has been through the sandbox. There is no way Dean's soul rose from his pyre to Heaven because the lore says that's impossible. Dean getting to Heaven would have taken a reaper showing up and walking his ass into the sandbox, period. Therefore, Dean's Heaven footage had to be a dream sequence, like what he would have if he was passed out.

All that said, I present to you, the way this episode would have gone if Andrew Dabb gave a crap about medical science, canon lore, or story continuity. Remember, just because we didn't see it happen on screen doesn't mean it didn't happen. There is no reason why this couldn't be what really happened, and the episode just suffered from really bad editing. (hashtag: deanisnotdead, hashtag: sosickofhavingtocleanupafterandrewdabb)

**DON'T YOU CRY NO MORE**

Sam didn't know his heart could break any more than it already had until Dean's lifeless body slumped into his arms. Shattered, he held it close to him as they sank to the ground together. He sat, cradling Dean against him, unable to let go yet. His tears flowed more heavily, soaking his face. There was no need to hold them back now. Dean was gone. He wouldn't see.

No, with new resolve he wiped the residue of the short but torrid cry out of his eyes. There was a job to finish. He couldn't do this now. He had to find the two boys and get them out of here. That's what Dean had said to do.

Always keep fighting, just like Dean always had. Drawing strength from that he made himself stand, hoisting the still warm body up with him. A tear fell and splashed on his hand. He almost missed it, thinking it one of his own.

What the hell? Sam let a rush of hope flood through him. It couldn't be, but it had to be. Desperately his fingers probed around Dean's jawline. He could feel it! It was faint, terrifyingly faint, and rapid, but it was there. Dean's heart, so busily pumping the life's blood out of his body was still driving a weak pulse through his veins.

Sam scooped him up, moving as quickly as he could manage under the weight, to the barn's door, yelling as he went for the boys to come out of hiding and get to his car, fast.

**XXXXX**

He'd been unwilling to move from Dean's bedside at first. Doctors had been unable to offer any guarantees. Dean's "accident" hadn't punctured a lung, or ruptured anything vital. Hearing someone else say it made it seem so obvious. In the moment, too caught up in the pain and fear to think straight, Sam had missed the signs. Dean hadn't been coughing or struggling to talk and breathe. He hadn't bled from the mouth, only his wound. The only bleeding had been from his wound, which had been a lot, enough to throw him into hypovolemic shock and cause him to pass out from blood loss.

Now it was a waiting game. Dean had either gotten help in time, or he hadn't. He would fight his way back to consciousness or he wouldn't. It wasn't the first time Sam had seen him this way, in a hospital bed, hooked up like some alien science experiment, tubes feeding him oxygen and fluids, wires collecting vital data for some machine or another to monitor and record. He started to pray it would not be the last but had to bitterly consider the folly in that. Was there even anyone left to pray to?

**XXXXX**

This was stupid. Dean was alone in the hospital, fighting for his life, and Sam was standing here, ready to light a pyre for a vampire of all things. He couldn't help it. He was sick of feeling helpless and useless. He had to do something, whether it did any good or not.

This vampire, this one specifically, out of all the possibilities that the big roulette wheel of life might have landed in front of them, it was **this** one.

Guilt gnawed at Sam at the memory of that hunt, all the delays he had caused, arguing about every little thing, demanding answers to questions he'd asked just for asking's sake, that stupid, childish blow up in the middle of the road. Now, he didn't know, had the time he'd wasted been enough to make a difference? Had he unwittingly cost Jenny first her humanity and then ultimately her life? If they'd been in time for her, would Dean be OK now? Had Sam unwittingly set the chain of events that lead to his brother's death in motion over a decade before?

He didn't know. He didn't know if he was trying to make what amends he could now, or hoping there was some help in it for Dean, or if it was just something to do, to fill the time of waiting that passes so slowly. Maybe, just maybe, if there was any justice in the universe, any cosmic balancing of the scales of karma, there might be some help for Dean in Sam finding it in himself to see Jenny as, not just another monster, something foul to be disposed of, but as a victim that they couldn't save. With what little hope he could muster, he tossed the lighter and watched the plume of smoke billow up to the sky.

**XXXXX**

It went against Sam's instincts to go back home while Dean's future was still uncertain, but there was no help for it. They'd left for Ohio expecting a basic hunt. If Sam was going to be on an extended stay out of state, there were details to put in order, things he'd need, things Dean would need. If Dean could feel the familiar ragged edges of the family photos, hear the memorized repetition of one of his own mix tapes, with all the warps and hisses that by now had come to feel like an expected part of the music, maybe that would give him something to hold onto, some memory of what he was fighting for.

Sam had arrived late and collapsed into the bed, resolved to get an early start, finish quickly and haul ass back to Ohio and Dean's side as soon as humanly possible. When morning came, for a blissful semi-conscious moment he didn't remember, thought he was waking up on just another day in the bunker. The memory wormed in, like an insidious spirit creeping out of the shadows. Dean wasn't in his bed, in his room. He was in another bed, in a hospital, fighting to hold on to what life he had left.

Entering Dean's room to select some of Dean's things to take along had hit Sam harder than he'd expected. Poor Miracle, he didn't even understand what was happening, why his friend was not where he should be. He just knew it was worrisome and painful. Sam pet the dog, speaking to him gently. Even if Miracle wasn't able to understand, or speak comforting words, it was still nice to not be totally alone.

If the thought of a quick but necessary trip to the bunker had been hard, the idea of going on a hunt, now of all times, almost broke Sam. The urge to claim a wrong number, say he was unavailable, make some excuse was almost overwhelming, almost. Even stronger was the knowledge of what Dean would want him to do. Go stop a werewolf from tearing out hearts in Austin or sit fretting bedside? There was no question. In his head, he could hear Dean's hypothetical chewing out. He forced the words, "I'm on my way." past his lips.

**XXXXX**

Leave it to Dean Winchester to beat the odds on death, again, and come out of it angry. Sam didn't even care. The accusations, the demands to know what sort of deal he had made, the questions about what this latest encore was going to cost them were the best thing Sam could remember since "Back In Time" had jolted him out of sleep on a Wednesday morning that felt so long ago now. Sam's elation just seemed to set Dean off even more. Yup, he was back. Nothing else mattered. That was everything.

Eventually, Sam was able to convince his brother that he hadn't broken his promise, or at least, to drop the interrogation for a while. He didn't mention Jenny's pyre. It probably hadn't done anything anyway, so why get Dean all worked up over it? He was going to need his strength for getting back on his feet.

A couple of days later, he was able to sit up, handle solid food, and complain about Sam's refusal to sneak him in a couple of beers, which he felt was the least he deserved. He had a long way to go. That wound was going to take time to heal, but it would heal.

Sam stayed with him as much as could be managed, filling him in on what he'd missed while he'd been out. Dean related his dreams to Sam.

"It was beautiful, Sammy." he said. "Bobby was there, and Mom and Dad. I should have known it was just a dream. No reaper, no sandbox, no other way into Fantasy-land since Metatron slammed the doors shut. I must be getting rusty not putting that together."

"You were probably pretty distracted. That'd be understandable, considering." Sam said. It was so good to see Dean with most of the medical hardware stripped off of him that Sam's sappy smile hadn't diminished by any noticeable degree over the two days.

"Yeah, probably, but since I've been back, I've had a chance to think. We've got to make a change, little brother. This life, it'll chew you up and spit you out. That's OK. Hunter, soldier, civilian, whatever, we all go eventually. It's one thing to die on the job. You can't avoid it, but what you can avoid is not living while you're alive. This has to stop being all we've got."

"Am I hearing this right? You want to give up hunting?" Sam's smile finally went, replaced with confused disbelief.

"No, I'm not saying give it up. I'm saying, we can have a life too. Jody does it. Donna too, punching the clock and going home most nights, a real home, like with windows and a lawn. Bobby did it before we drug him back in. Remember Pastor Jim? He had a whole church he ran between demonic crap he had to go deal with. I mean, OK, things got crazy for us for a while, a long while, but it's different now, and I think we got to be different too."

Sam still wasn't sure he understood. "So, what do you want to do?" he asked.

Dean didn't hesitate to answer. He didn't need to think about it. He thought about almost nothing else since he'd been out of death's doorway. "I want us to stop living where we work. I want to stop scouring news feeds for cases like all we're allowed to do when we aren't hunting is look for something to hunt. The hunts will come to us, like that werewolf you dropped in Texas. You didn't have to look for that. Donna tossed it your way. I want to run a bar and call it Rocky's, only this time, without a power mad archangel with daddy issues denting the door of the beer cooler." He took a bracing breath, looked at Sam seriously, and went on, "I want you to go propose to Eileen, soon, before she comes to her senses and realizes how much better she could do."

Dean knew that last part would cause a bitch face. Sam did not disappoint.

**XXXXX**

It took a little time, and some less than gentle nudging, for Sam to work up the nerve to propose. It took Eileen, who had written off normal as an option for herself long before, a little time to accept. That made the day, when it came, all the sweeter, that and being able to humiliate Sam with the best man's toast.

Leaving the bunker took longer. They were settled in, making it easy to procrastinate on the house hunting. Eileen's news that their little family would be getting a little bigger lit the fuse on a hard deadline. There were just too many ways a curious toddler could accidentally end the world by getting into and playing with the wrong super powerful who knows what.

Motherhood wasn't something Eileen had ever considered as a potential part of her life. Dean, with his literal lifetime of parenting experience, had been only too happy to step up and revel in the role of family baby care expert, right up until he figured out that Sam's inability to master the finer points of a diaper change was a con job. Both boys had said a few things they were later grateful that Eileen couldn't overhear before that fight was over.

As predicted, hunts did come without being obsessively tracked down. Once or twice a month, some team up of the two of them would be in the field putting an end to something that needed ended while the third would hold down the home front and tend to bath time and bedtime.

Holidays also came, bringing with them the joyful visits of Mrs Butters to scoop young Dean up into hugs and scold his uncle about not having given her another little one to fuss over. Dean would promise to get right on that, silently recommit to his research as to how to crack open the empty, and then help himself to more than his fair share of whatever had come out of the oven most recently.

They all three knew the world could be a dangerous place, in ways that most parents couldn't even imagine. Young Dean would have to be trained, if only for self defense. At least, Dean and Eileen believed so. Sam balked at the idea. Dean had taken him aside, reminded him how it had felt to discover the truth had been kept from him. Sam did remember, a Christmas Eve so long ago, crying himself to sleep because he'd felt so scared, so helpless in a world where nightmares were real, and he'd been given no way to fight back should the need arise. He'd relented, not truly sure he'd made the right choice. The boy took to training like one would expect of a Winchester. Fatherly pride crowded out most of Sam's misgivings.

Another thing they all three knew was the harm of letting the training rob a child of their childhood. They'd all lived it, and each carried their own unique scars as a result. Games of catch and squirt gun battles were a common part of the family routine, as was Dean hogging the camera whenever one of them got recorded. Anyone watching the Winchester's home movies could mistakenly assume that Dean had never been there at all. It was useless to point out Dean's absence in the family photos. Once Dean had latched onto a toy there was no prying it away from him. If not having pictures was the price of getting to keep the camera to himself, he was good with that.

The first young hunter to call seeking Sam's help with research was Crissy Chambers. More calls, and then visits, came more frequently. The years were taking their toll and Sam found it was a relief to settle into the new role of mentor and teacher. He found it fulfilling, and it gave him an acute understanding of Bobby's habit of calling everyone an "idjit".

With the slower pace, Dean was able to open his bar, which he named Rocky and Bullwinkle's, and hunters were known to drop in, from time to time.

The day eventually came, that Sam's son, now an adult, had sat his parents down and informed them of his decision to hunt, his desire to carry on the family business. Sam had known this had been a possibility, but he'd mostly tried not to think about it. Now here it was, no more running from it, and he found himself torn between the instinct to protect his son in any way he could and the knowledge that he couldn't control his whole life. Excusing himself to take a walk and think things over he had wandered, maybe by auto-pilot, out to the garage where the Impala had sat parked in storage for the last couple of years.

Sitting behind the wheel again, Sam could remember, the bad and the good. He and Dean had made the world a better place. Yes, they had suffered, and they had sacrificed, but they had also fought, and they had won, because that's what Winchesters do. Reaching out to take a hold of the wheel Sam closed his eyes and let the present slip away, let himself live for a short time in the memory of what had been. He could support his son's decision.

Dean won in the end. Without a personal angelic medical staff to lower his cholesterol every time he was healed it was the bacon that killed him. He'd known he was dead when he opened his eyes. Reapers have a distinctive feel when they're not trying to mask what they are, so there was no mistaking why this stranger was in his room in the middle of the night.

"You can go." a voice from the shadows behind the reaper said, "I'll be escorting this one."

Dean's attention was grabbed. It couldn't be.

"My instructions are that this one is slotted for the empty." the reaper said calmly, turning to the shadowed corner.

"Your instructions have been changed. I won't repeat myself." the voice said. The reaper hesitated only briefly before vanishing.

Dean's gut told him not to even hope. Having the hope crushed would just be too much. He watched as the owner of the voice stepped out of the shadows.

"CAS!" he yelled, his soul jumping from the bed and rushing to throw his arms around the angel.

Cas returned his hug. "Hello, Dean," he said as if it had only been a day instead of decades.

"I don't get it. You were like perma-dead. What happened?" Dean asked, his excitement still strong.

"We have much to discuss." the angel said, "I promise, I'll explain everything. For now, it was my duty to pull you out of Hell, now it is my honor to escort you to Heaven."

"Wait, Cas," Dean said, "we can't go yet. There's something I have to hang around for."

"Dean, you know what becomes of Earthbound spirits."

"Not for long, not for long," Dean reassured the angel, "It's just, this will probably be my last chance to see my own funeral."

Dean approved of the send off his nephew gave him, with the help of the Fitzgerald twins. He thought that playing Bon Jovi's "Blaze Of Glory" had been a nice touch.

With the delay, they ended up staying even longer. Sam was going to be along so shortly that a separate trip would have been impractical. Cas was nothing, if not practical. He found the heir to Dean Winchester's name and legacy impressive, worthy of carrying both. Watching him gently usher his father into the veil, Cas felt he knew all needed to of this young man. He reached out with his grace, offering comfort to the boy in a painful and difficult time. He would, Cas knew, be all right. He was strong. He was a Winchester. And the world would be all right, as long as there were Winchesters in it.


End file.
